I heard one of the Facebook Q&A’s where she spoke about that and her point was to not give the admissions officers any “opportunity” to reject a candidate. So a 4 on a test could be viewed as a negative if everything else on the academic side is strong. But a few other friends mentioned not submitting a 4, maybe they are part of the Haberson group, not sure. We will submit his score, I mean a 4 in AP Physics 1 is pretty darn awesome and if a college views that as a negative that college is not a good fit for our son and us !
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I agree that a 4 is an excellent score. Candidly, I dont think it’ll make a difference one way or another. It’s probably a footnote in the overall scheme of things.
Who is going to look at a kid’s overall record and think “Oh my god, a 4 in AP Physics”. At the same time, if you dont submit it, it probably wouldnt negatvely affect you either because they only review what students submit. I dont think AO’s have the time or inclination to wonder why a student didnt submit an AP test score.
We’re probably over thinking every little factor that could sway a decision where in reality, it probably doesnt matter that much either way.
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D24 will be submitting her AP Physics 4. She’s rightfully proud of that score. Her teacher has been known for years as a terrible teacher and is finally leaving teaching. D24 relied heavily on resources the other excellent teachers provided to their classes as well as external resources.I am very proud of how she handled a difficult situation. D22 submitted a few 4s along with 5s and got into a few T25 schools so that’s another datapoint.
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S for whatever reason does relatively poorly on standardized tests while maintaining a high GPA at his competitive school (where there is grade deflation) while taking the most rigorous subjects. We are perplexed by this. He is quite frustrated at this point since he is not able to crack over a 30 on ACT or a 1350 on SAT. Last attempt will be the SAT in Aug. He’s taken both tests once.
Anyone have a fabulous tutor for SAT that could help him, or have a similar situation that would help us understand what the issue could be?
First off, a 1350 isn’t a bad score - I think that’s still in the 90th percentile. Is there any particular section he struggles with? Is it the time element? Some kids panic and rush which ends up in lots of careless errors. Hopefully someone with more experience can help with some advice.
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Time element is one for sure. And another perplexing thing is that he thinks he did well and usually he has not.
Do you know what sections he is struggling with? And/or if he is running out of time? How many times has he taken it and has he worked with a tutor already?
He has not worked with any tutor. He runs out of time on most sections.
S24 also ran out of time on 3/5 of the sections while taking ACT. He did score a 30 and decided to call it one and done.
I do think if your son wants to re-take - working with a tutor to get sections finished would be helpful to improving the score. But, as others said, a 29 or. 1350 are really good scores so if he feels done with tests might not be worth pushing.
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Yes - they are good scores but not enough for the T50-55 schools that he is looking at. Going Test Optional is something that we are considering now for sure.
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He has a solid base. Here is where a tutor comes in - HOW to tackle the questions.
My D who is naturally inclined towards English was running out of time in Math. After one session with the tutor she realized she was wasting time solving problems like it was homework. He taught her how to identify the answer depending on the type of question and move on.
S is the opposite. The tutor taught him to move past a hard section quickly picking best guesses and then moving on. He then goes back to the hard passage to work on it more throughly with the time left. There was one SAT where he did that and so many kids we know ran out of time because they got stuck in the middle.
S also lost a lot of points in Writing the first time around. That one is a killer as each mistake costs you 10 points. It is also an easy one to tackle. We got him the Erica Meltzer book and he methodically worked through it, one chapter a week.
You really only need the a handful of sessions with a tutor but you do need to practice. Our tutor himself admitted that he couldn’t do for her much more than what he taught D in a couple of sessions and she was frustrated that we wanted her to continue with him. That was until I pointed out to her that she was so lucky that we could afford to so she would make brain space for the SAT a couple of hours each week. Without it that there was always a paper or homework or project that took precedence, despite her best intentions. She had been very offended that we thought she needed a tutor 
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The time pressure in these tests can have very little relationship to most academic work, let alone real world work. There are various techniques one can experiment with, and one approach is to start at the section level, or even passage level where relevant, and try out a few different time management techniques/strategies to see which seem to work best (by doing this at the section/passage level you can do a lot more experiments versus doing a whole test each time). A tutor can possibly help, but if you just google things like “ACT time management”, “SAT time management”, or similar, you should get a lot of free advice on tips to try out.
But in the end, some people may just never do as well on these tests as they do in class. Fortunately the move to test optional (or test blind) being so common has taken a lot of the pressure off people like that. And personally, if nothing seems to be closing that gap enough, I would not insist on devoting too much time or energy to test improvement as it likely can be spent in better ways.
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In my community, kids that run out of time try and get accommodations from the College Board. I’ve never known someone to get turned down, although I’ve read that it happens. Some of these kids with extra time clearly have learning differences. Others seem to just have test anxiety or just can’t read as fast…Others I have no idea how they convinced College Board they needed accomodations.
Then, with the extra time, most take the ACT because it’s easier to do better on that (for many kids) with extra time.
It’s no secret that affluent areas have extremely high rates of kids with accommodations. Not necessarily suggesting this for you…just pointing out that running out of time is very common and many many kids that have no problems in school get extra time on College Board tests.
My kid (who doesn’t get extra time) thinks the whole thing is kinda scammy (esp for a few kids she knows), but it is what it is. At least where we live.
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Interesting about the number of accomodations in affluent areas. I know someone from our neighboring affluent town who had to go through a lot of paperwork and finally got a lawyer to convince the school that he needed extra time. So I guess schools are pushing back a lot on this.
According to our school counselor, anything below a 1500 SAT or equivalent ACT and you should apply test optional.
My kid would be thrilled with a 1300-1350. She’ll be applying test optional.
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It totally depends on the school. My school is incredibly easy. Shockingly easy. They don’t exactly have an incentive to deny. They love higher scores.
I’m not sure about that. I think it should depend on what the score range is at each school. At many schools (even one as highly regarded as Purdue) a 1420 might be at or above the median, in which case there shouldn’t be a problem submitting the score.
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I don’t have any suggestions to help him, but just to share my D22 was in the same boat (great grades/salutatorian with test scores did not match) and had great admissions results going test optional. She took the SAT twice and ended up just under 1400. In her case, her scores reflected her loathing of math and her excellence in reading/writing. Her application demonstrated her love of history and she got in most places she applied, including a number of T20 schools. She had a great freshman year.
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Really? I’m assuming your counselor is talking about T20/25 type schools since the typical SAT at most colleges is much lower than a 1500.
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Thats very assuring to know. Thanks. Finding a tutor that can teach time management would be good probably (if he agrees! Thats another issue) and after Aug call it quits if it doesnt help.
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